The browser you are using is not supported by this website. All versions of Internet Explorer are no longer supported, either by us or Microsoft (read more here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/windows/end-of-ie-support).

Please use a modern browser to fully experience our website, such as the newest versions of Edge, Chrome, Firefox or Safari etc.

Astrid Kander. Photo.

Astrid Kander

Professor

Astrid Kander. Photo.

Global trade in the Anthropocene : A review of trends and direction of environmental factor flows during the Great Acceleration

Global handel i Antropocen : En översikt av trender och riktning i miljöfaktorflöden under den Stora Accelerationen

Author

  • John Brolin
  • Astrid Kander

Summary, in English

Global trade is a neglected topic in debates on the Anthropocene, but plays an implicit role in several suggested definitions of it. Trade’s role in shifting environmental burdens around the globe differed substantially between the Columbian Exchange (1492−1800), the Industrial Revolution (~1800−1950) and the Great Acceleration (post-1950). However, this systematic state-of-the-art review shows that the more than 350 global studies of trade-embedded environmental factors all centre on the Great Acceleration. An underlying concern here is whether environmental factor flows are to the economic and/or environmental benefit of all, a case of the rich exploiting the poor, or merely the inadvertent consequence of differences in environmental efficiency. We point out similarities in the trends and direction of flows between major world regions and between developed and developing countries. Factors such as land, virtual water, HANPP and eutrophying pollutants that are related to the organic economy (or direct biomass flows), primarily flow from regions where population density is low to where it is high, and are only secondarily affected by affluence. Indicators such as energy, airborne pollutant emissions and greenhouse gasses that are related to the mineral economy (fossil fuel, metal and mineral use) tend to flow from developing to developed countries, and are explained either by higher consumption rates or greater environmental efficiency in affluent countries, which has similar consequences for net flows. We weave the shifting trends and directions of flows during the Great Acceleration into a coherent story. Finally, returning to the period before the Great Acceleration, we argue the need for global studies of trade-embedded factor flows before 1950 to test ideas on the character and origins of the Anthropocene, and to accomplish this suggest either geographically extending quantitative long-term national and/or commodity studies, or environmentally extending recently compiled global monetary bilateral trade data for the pre-1950 period.

Department/s

  • Department of Economic History
  • Sustainability transformations over time and space

Publishing year

2022

Language

English

Pages

71-110

Publication/Series

The Anthropocene Review

Volume

9

Issue

1

Document type

Journal article review

Publisher

SAGE Publications

Topic

  • Economic History

Keywords

  • consumption-based accounts
  • ecologically unequal exchange
  • embodied land
  • emissions embodied in trade
  • environmental footprints
  • environmental load displacement
  • global environmental change
  • physical trade balance
  • trade-embedded impact
  • virtual water

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 2053-020X